The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1887-07-01

my upon Sllk OF COIJOn In tne century
before Christ, paper being attributed
to the first century after Christ. 1t is
certain that many hundred years ago
they had begun to put writing on
transfer paper, lay this face downward
on wood or stone, rub off the impress
ion or paste on the transparent paper,
cut away the wood or stone, and take
an impression in ink which duplicated
the original. First, probably, they cut
the letters into the block, leaving white
letters on black ground, which method,
Didot thinks, was known to the Ro-
mans and was the process referred to
by Pliny; afterward they cut away the
block, leaving the letters raised, to
print black on white. This last pro-
cess is attributed to Foong- -Taou, Chin
ese minister of state in the tenth cen
tury, who was driven to the invention
by the necessity of getting exact copies
of his official documents. Indeed,
there is detailed tradition of Chinese
Gutenberg, one Pitching, who in 1O4l
carved cubes of porcelain paste with
Chinese characters, afterward baking
them, and literally "setting" the porce.
lain types by help of parallel wires on
n plate of iron in bed of heated
resinous cement. These types he ham,
mered or planed even, and pressed close
together, so that when the cement
hardened they were practically solid
block, which could be taken to pieces
again by melting the cement. But Pi-
Ching was born out of time, in the
wrong country, and to the wrong Ian
guage. The Chinese word alphabet
contains at least 10000, possibly 240,-
900 characters Qhe National Printing
office at Paris made types for 43,000),
and for the lesser number the Chinese
compositor would require large room
to himself, where he wander among five
hundred cases "looking for a sign,'
while Chinese wood .engravers will cut
on pear wood, or on the hard waxed
composition used for that Oldest of ex-
isting dailies, the Pekin Gazette, an
octave page of characters for forty or
fifty cents hundreth part of the cost
of coarse work, thousandth of the
cost of the finest work, here. The
Chinese printer, without press, but
with double brush like canoe pad
die, linking the block with one end, and
pressing the paper laid on the block
with the dry brush at the other end,
prints two thousand sheets a day, on
one side only, which are then bound
into book by making the fold at the
front of the sheet, and stitching
through the cut edges at the back. A
fair-sized book is sold for eight or ten
cents, and there is little inducement
for improvement. Playing. cards, in
vented probably in Hindoostan as
modification of chess aud then engrav-
ed on ivory, were made in China and
Hlndostan centuries ago, and thence
they seem to have made their way into
Europe, probably through Saracens or
Jews, before 400.
Meanwhile the business of book-mak-
ing by copying had had curious
development in two directions. The
industry so fourishing in Cicero's
Rome had dwindled to nothing by the
sixth century. The great libraries had
been destroyed. Few could write their
names: fewer could read. The Irish
monks alone preserved the art of illu-
minating, aud from the island of Iona
shed such light as they could through
but Europe. Charlemague himself
could not write, but used a curious
monogram to picture his name; he was
the more ready, it may be, to permit
his English adviser, the monk Alcuin,
to require that every monastery should
maintain scriptorlum, and every con-
vent or bishop should employ per-
manent copyist, 'using only Roman
letters" for the making of books. The
Church monopolized this art up to the
twelfth century, when the ignorance
of the inferior clergy, and later the in
fuence of st. Francis d'Assisi, who
forbade Bible, breviary, and psalter to
his order, made way for the lay book
sellers who congregated about the
great schools Of theology like Padua
and Paris. But the church still arro-
gated superintendence and censorship;
the University Of Paris required 'the
stationers, vulgarly called booksellers"
the first name coming from their
selling at station or shop-''to tell
the truth, without deceit or lying,
touching the price of books" which
was fixed by four master book,
sellers appointed by the University,
with four deniers profit when sold to
teachers or scholars, or six deniers
when sold to the public Even then
the bookseller might not buy book
for sale until it had been exposed five
days in the hall of the university, and
its purchase declined by teachers
and scholars /; and he was obliged to
loan it for copying, at small fixed
price, to any student giving security.
Consequently the university was, later
on, compelled to illuminate against
base booksellers who, naturally desiring
to earn living, did not uphold the
dignity of their profession, but mixed
it up with ''vile trades" such as "trip
peries and like haDer-dashery," as mod
ern booksellers have also been compelled
to do. Vellum became scarce, and the
richer buyers disdained paper. This
fact promoted the differentiation of
hook making into two distinct divisions.
on the one side the superb missals of
the religious orders and the daintily
written and bound troubadour books
of the courts on the other, flood of
alphabets, primers, creeds, prayer
books, and crude school-books, won
derfully cheap, from a groschen up,
made by unprofessional copyists, de
manded as the result of the Church
schools, the work of such early reform
ers as Wycliffe and Huss, and the gen
eral awakening of Europe. The fra
ternity of St, Luke, existing in Paris
in 1901, the Company of Stationers, in
London, l405, and book-trade guilds
in other cities, show the extent Of the
industry,-R II. BowKER, IN Har-
per'S Magazine for July.